Shit, they’re turning a lot of comics into movies, aren’t they? Even the really crappy ones, like Dennis the Menace and Richie fucking Rich. (Which reminds me: where’s my fucking Calvin and Hobbes movie? I know, yeah, Hollywood has been shit out of decent ideas for decades — but you’d think if they were going to go spelunking the bowels of pop culture to find characters they can buttfuck on the big screen, they could at least pick some good ones.)

And so it is I must discuss a comic — rather, a ‘Graphic Novel’ — and a movie, both sharing the same title, and both, in theory, covering something like the same story. Or at least the same idea. Or at the very least, the same characters, right?

Don’t bet on it.

Comic Cover

And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, “clean art”, “cool stories”, “interesting characters” and “plenty of action” would just about sum up my reasons for reading comics back when I first got started, as a kid. Of course I was delighted when they grew up and confronted more challenging ideas, when the artists broke out and challenged both themselves and their readers: it’s great to see one of your favourite mediums exploited to the hilt. But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing, and quite frequently all I really want out of a comic book is exactly what Wanted brings to the table.

The story isn’t complex. It’s an old standard: nebbishy, painfully ordinary character suddenly discovers he has Astonishing Powers, and with those powers he also Inherits A Destiny. It worked for Harry Potter and a hundred others, and it works here. Wesley Gibson is a young man working in a menial, meaningless office job. His skanky girlfriend is porking his best friend, his boss is an abusive shitbag, and his life has nothing to recommend it. Lucky Wes: it turns out the father who abandoned him and his mother when he was but a baby was actually a super-duper hit-man called The Killer, and when The Killer is in turn killed by party or parties unknown, The Killer’s super-duper buddies and associates collect Wesley and set about teaching him about his powers so he can take his father’s place. More accurately, The Fox — one of those generically unlikely comic-book spandex babes — shows up, tips a shitload of havoc into Wesley’s nine-to-fiver, and after that it’s all down the rabbit hole, son.

Now, there’s a complicated plot involving The Killer’s old employer (a psychotic ganglord called The Rictus) and a whole bunch of other supervillainish sorts all trying to bump each other off in one way or another, but that’s just backdrop. The real story is all about Wesley discovering his super-powers, figuring out how to use them, and where he stands in the world, and making his moral choices. And that’s where it gets interesting, because in the world of Wanted, there are no superheroes. None. Because, you see, the supervillains finally got smart, worked together, and killed them all off. And now the entire world is secretly run by an all-powerful fraternity of supervillains with access to mind-buggering comic book technologies, wild-ass superpowers, and an unlimited supply of spandex.

That’s the fun of it, right there. What would happen in a world where the caped crusaders got their asses kicked permanently? What would the supervillains do with the world if they owned it? Millar answers these questions with a great deal of glee, violence, and snarky, smirking humour that pokes fun at the superhero characters and conventions with which we grew up. And it’s fine. It’s not deep. It’s not incredibly revelatory. But it’s true to form, true to the characters, and it’s goddam fun. My recommendation? Buy the book, laugh at the gags, enjoy the story, and have a good fucking day.

And thus, we turn to Wanted, the movie. Or rather, UnWanted.

With Angelina Jolie as ”Fox” (no ‘the’ here. No spandex or pointy ears either), an unlikely villain in Morgan Freeman’s “Sloan”, James McAvoy brilliantly equipped to play Wesley The Nobody, and a pleasantly spiky appearance from Terence Stamp as a rogue gun-maker, you’d think the film would be set. But McAvoy can’t bring any kind of focus or intensity to Wesley The Badass, Morgan Freeman’s villainy feels a lot like an Amish farmer trying to take on the role of a used-car salesman (Buy thou this vehicle, brother, for though it be truly rooted, certainly thou couldst do worse and I shall make thee a sweet deal on thy trade!) and Ange’s role consists mostly of slinking around the screen with a gun. Oh, and Terence lasts something under five minutes on screen.

The absolute highlight of this film? Angelina Jolie’s arse as she emerges from a bath of some milky liquid. Looking good for a multi-momma, Ange!

The lows? Eckh. Where to begin?

It’s not the direction. I can say that much. I liked Timur Bekmambetov’s rough, kinetic style in Night Watch and Day Watch. Certainly the action-scene showpieces are real eye-candy, and he manages to keep the thing ticking over nicely enough. No, the problem is the writing. In precisely the area were a movie derived from written media should be strongest, this movie falls flat on its arse.

Take the basic plot, for example: how the hell did the film-makers produce this story from the original comic? There are no supervillains, no world bereft of superheroes. Oh no. Instead, there’s some weird-ass freaky religious group called The Weavers, who have the ability to — wait for it! — shoot bullets very accurately, and even make them curve in flight. Yeah! Whoa! Cool, eh?

Well… no. Not all that cool. Just kind of silly.

Anyway, these Weavers have a magic fucking loom, that weaves special coded orders saying who has to die. Where does the magic come from? Why does this loom somehow know exactly who needs to be killed before they turn psycho and alter history in a bad, bad way? No idea. Not even a hint. Nope: the loom weaves orders, and Sloan reads the orders off the loom and then delivers little handkerchiefs to people like Fox and they go off and shoot somebody.

But the Weavers are good, right? They shoot bad guys. They protect the weave of history, courtesy of the wisdom of the Magic Loom. Oh, but shock horror! Morgan Freeman has secretly gone all commercial, and he’s been sending the Weavers out to kill the wrong people, to suit himself. And Wesley’s dad found out and tried to whack Morgan, but Morgan tried to get him first, and then Morgan sent Ange to get young Wesley and train him up to kill his own dad because Morgan is all amoral and evil…

…when in fact that very amorality was the whole freaking point of the original comic.

Plot? Story? Where the comic worked as a vicious coming-of-age narrative that let Millar showcase his ideas for a supervillain world, the movie struggles to find a reason to exist. Wanted the movie is a bag of special effects used to build showy action scenes that are only of marginal relevance to anything resembling a plot. I’m torn between my instinctual desire not to spoil the film by telling you the ending, and my certain knowledge that the ending is so fucking lame that telling you Fox shoots a bullet in a circle to kill all the Weavers but Wesley and Sloan (herself included, in a genuinely silly moment which we’re meant to take as an expression of her deep faith in The Magic Loom) won’t actually ruin the movie for you in any fashion worse than the film-makers have already fucked it up.

So, there you have it. Wanted, the comic is a reasonable and entertaining piece of graphic narrative. Wanted, the movie is a piece of flashy garbage that throws the plot and the themes of the original story out a twentieth-story window, and then runs down the wall after them riddling them with bullets all the way to the sidewalk. Wanted, the comic raises a few interesting questions, and offers some nice, slightly tongue-in-cheek ideas as answers. Wanted, the movie raises just one question: why? Why, Morgan? Why, Angelina? And why, oh why, all you idiots who sent this one up the box-office charts?